


Tested

by octopodes



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Drugged Sex, Dubious Consent, M/M, Other, Tentacles, Xenophilia, arena fucking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-08-29 05:27:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8477092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/octopodes/pseuds/octopodes
Summary: “I would recommend you do not lose another fight.” There’s a reluctance in Sendak’s tone, a hesitance Shiro hasn’t heard there before.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yue_ix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yue_ix/gifts).



The roar of the crowds is deafening. Or so Shiro expects it is, from the way every Galran subject here for the fights is standing. Some have their hands cupped around their mouths as they shout. No doubt yelling at Shiro’s opponent to finish him.

He guesses, anyway. There’s too much blood running into his ear to hear on top of what he suspects is a ruptured membrane this time. Oddly, it focuses him, and he’s able to see his opponent telegraph their punch in time for him to dodge it.

Their tail, long and jointed and with a wicked point at the end, however, comes through after the feint to catch him across the stomach. The impact throws him across the ring where he lands against the boards and stays down with a soft groan.

He’s learned to tell when he’s beat, when to take his losses.

He’s dragged from the stadium and dumped unceremoniously in front of a cabal of druids, who merely staunch the worst of the bleeding and repair the ruptured membrane in his ear. He’s fairly sure his ribs are still bruised, if not cracked, and his right ankle barely holds his weight. Nonetheless, he’s shooed out of what passes for a medbay and flanked by guards as he slowly makes his way to his quarters. The guards make no pretense of actually guarding him - he’s clearly in no condition to run or fight back - and have already turned to go back down the corridor as he presses the buzzer for entrance.

“You should not have lost that fight.” Sendak looks more bemused than Shiro thinks he should, but as the druids hadn’t cleaned the blood on his face - now crusting in his eyelashes - he thinks he shouldn’t try to catalog Sendak’s expressions right now and can’t be blamed for misinterpreting a few.

However, it’s hard to misinterpret the deep frown on his face as he helps Shiro start to disrobe and sees the bruises already blooming on his side. Definitely cracked, then. “You never should have let the fight run so long you became so tired as to lose sight of the tail. I warned you about the kaetzl’s tail, did I not?” 

Not for the first time, Shiro wants to snap back at Sendak, yell at him that if he has so much knowledge of what Shiro should be doing, why isn’t he the one down there fighting? But Shiro knows the answers to that - Sendak is a Commander, Shiro is a slave. Sendak has fought more races than Shiro will ever see on this ship. Sendak has tried to pass down his knowledge; it’s not his fault Shiro is too weak to put it to use.

Sendak’s advice for this fight had been to cut off the kaetzl’s tail at the very beginning, neutralizing the threat of the powerful appendage and its poison barbs. But Shiro also knew from the lessons that a part of a kaetzl’s cardiovascular system was housed in its tail to help produce its poison and that cutting off the tail would kill it.

He’d won fights but had yet to take a life. It was a point that seemed to continually disgust Sendak. 

It got harder, each time after a fight, to keep from feeling a pang of regret at seeing Sendak’s disappointed expression.

This fight, however, had actually posed a challenge even without struggling to determine whether a blow would be fatal or not, and Shiro was more than happy to finally get to sit down and feel like he could rest. He knew his rations would be cut and his rankings would drop, making it harder to earn favors, but right now his world centered around the cooling salve being rubbed on his ribs with almost soothing strokes of Sendak’s hands.

“I would recommend you do not lose another fight.” There’s a reluctance in Sendak’s tone, a hesitance Shiro hasn’t heard there before. He wonders if it is because Sendak is truly apathetic about his standing or if there is something about this upcoming match to be wary of. At last check, Shiro’s rankings were good enough to hold through a few losses without plummeting, but he supposes if the next bout were up against someone from the lowest rung, losing could in fact send him straight to the bottom. Sendak always refuses to say anything about his opponents until they were publicly revealed three days before the match, so Shiro can’t ask him now. Which worries him all the more that Sendak thinks he has to say something.

He hisses slightly as the soft pads of Sendak’s fingers brush over a particularly tender spot. “It’s not as if I _try_ to lose,” he says, trying to keep it from sounding like an excuse. And he doesn’t, not really. He just can’t say that he’s using all of the weapons or knowledge at his disposal.

“Of course you don’t. You simply don’t fight to the extent you could.” Shiro winces again as Sendak’s rubs become firmer, harsher. “Which can count, in the right person’s mind, as not trying to win at all.”

“Is it the same in your mind?” Shiro hates how fragile his voice sounds, and he blames the fact that one of Sendak’s hands is currently on his chest, making it hard to breathe. He doesn’t care what the commander of a conquering alien army thinks of him. He can’t.

“And if I said it was?” Sendak’s hands still and Shiro can feel the heat radiating from his body as Sendak leans in closer. “If I said they were the same, would you fight truly? Would you kill?” 

Shiro can almost hear an unspoken _”for me”_ , but it’s gotten so hard to separate his own imaginings from the cues the Galran is actually giving off. He can’t deny he’s leant into Sendak’s hands more often than flinched away these days, but the thought of killing is still more unsettling than the thought of disappointing Sendak. Which is an unsettling thought in and of itself - they should never be on the same level at all.

“I don’t know,” Shiro all but whispers. Oddly, Sendak looks pleased at this, rather than the disappointment or anger Shiro expected at his indecision. 

He only nods and exits the room, leaving Shiro to worry and heal.

His next bout, when the announcement comes, is with what Sendak tells him is a neopod, which in Shiro’s opinion doesn’t look much like a threat at first glance. If they were back on Earth, he would say it belongs in the water and would be unwieldy on land, unlikely to be able to put up much of a fight. He’s glad Sendak had showed him surveillance tapes of the previous fights - its tentacles and main body had to be thickly muscled to move that quickly or kill that surely.

Other than the sharp step up in his competitor’s ranking and the later than usual placement of the bout in the arena order, there’s nothing that marks this fight out of the ordinary, however, and Shiro wonders again if Sendak’s warning not to lose this fight was more psychological than an actual warning of a threat. 

He has a thought to cut off tentacles if he must - losing one in a previous fight had slowed the neopod down but not threatened its life. He can’t tell now with how many are in the writhing mass before him, but he thinks it’s even grown back.

The bell rings before he’s even had a chance to remove his tunic; what passes for a referee hadn’t even looked over to check if he was ready. There are already tentacles wrapped around his wrists and throat and by the laughs he can hear from the stands, Shiro knows that the early start was deliberate. 

He can’t find any sort of footing or purchase: the tentacles have lifted him up off the ground and his hands keep slipping on whatever substance the neopod is secreting to protect itself. Shiro spares a thought to wonder how he would have fought on even ground, but perhaps this end was inevitable with how easily it’s already caught him up. He twists, trying to find an angle that is as awkward for the tentacle to hold him as it is to be held by the tentacle, but the thick appendage around his waist and torso flexes with him as smaller ones bring his wrists together.

With a small snap, the thin tendril wrapping around his wrists to tie them in place breaks off. _That answers that question_ , Shiro thinks as he watches the small tentacle heal and regrow before his eyes.

He’s trapped and on his way to being trussed up and he hasn’t even had an opportunity to fight. But, by the way the roar of the crowd is only amping up, he thinks it can’t be the end. Maybe this is how it ends, so far from Earth, with thousands of aliens screaming for his death at the hands - tentacles? - of an alien he’s almost positive is a ringer at this point.

The screens showing the battle shut off and the spectators in the stands pull out an array of viewing devices: everything from binoculars to telescopes to a magnifying glass for a spectator that has more eyes than can fit around the glass. 

Then the announcer’s voice booms from the speakers and the crowd cheers even harder. Shiro can still only barely make out the words, and while he can tell that the phrase he’s figured out indicates the loser of a match is used, there’s much more to it. Shiro catches a glimpse of where Sendak is in the stands, but he is too far away for Shiro to make out anything but the displeased body language, arms crossed tightly over his deep chest. 

He’s still looking at Sendak when the first tentacle is shoved into his mouth.

It has a slightly salty, slightly sour taste, but Shiro’s concern is more for the way the tentacle doesn’t stop wriggling as it forces its way to the back of his throat. His mouth floods with saliva and he jerks in the neopod’s hold, but his mouth is so full he can do nothing but swallow around the intrusion as it secretes more of its slickness. 

At least it doesn’t burn going down, he thinks, flashing back to an opponent who spit acid almost as quickly as she dodged Shiro’s attacks. It’s almost warming; under different circumstances event pleasant. He tells himself the shudder that racks his body is from thinking of what the fluid could do to his insides and not the way smaller tentacles have started to wind their way up his legs.

He’s clearly lost: he’s fairly sure the previous rules accounted for an opponent’s inability to yell or signal their surrender. But it seems there’s a rulebook he hasn’t learned yet, a whole set of matches he’s been kept from and the purpose of those matches is becoming increasingly clear as the neopod’s tentacles wind their way up his body, almost caressing as they seemingly search for something.

It becomes even clearer when they find what they were looking for and peel the zipper of his bodysuit down over his back. 

Shiro renews his struggles at the touch of the slick tentacles against his bare skin, but his limbs feel heavy - heavier than even accounting for the added weight of the tentacles should mean. He realizes, foggily, that his struggles have even turned more into thrusts of his hips, the wild jerks of trying to free himself slowing into something more rhythmic and desperate, seeking out the touch of the tentacles instead of trying to get away from them. 

He stops, ashamed, face flaming even further as the laughs of the crowd filter back to him. Their supposed Champion, brought so low so quickly. The tentacle still filling his mouth keeps him from ducking his head like he wants to, too large for him to even get leverage to try to bite it. His jaw is starting to ache, but it’s quickly pushed aside in panic as two smaller tentacles slip into either side of his open suit and move forward to cup his cock.

He’s hard, startlingly so for all that panic is the foremost thought in his mind, and even as he struggles, the tentacle in his mouth forces him to swallow another wave of its aphrodisiac - it’s starting to taste sweeter and Shiro wonders in a sort of mad bubble of laughter if it can adapt its taste to its victim.

The tentacles are oddly gentle as they wrap around his cock. Their soft stroking is accompanied by an odd ripping sound that he can’t move his head to see better, but it becomes clear from the loosening of fabric around his waist and hips that one of the other tentacles has sawed through his bodysuit and is now peeling it off of his body. The tentacles holding him adjust to let it pass and when they come back to wrap around his legs, Shiro can feel his legs being splayed wide and bent upward. He wants to shrink back from being so on display, especially as he can feel the neopod turn - to better display him to the other side of the arena, he thinks. But he’s all but fellating the tentacle in his mouth now - it’s pulled back enough that he can get suction on it, all thoughts of biting washed aside with each fresh wave of fluid he swallows - and the grip on his cock is just right, in time with his sucks and jerks of his hips, making it harder and harder to spare a thought for what the crowd watching him must think.

Shiro’s lost to the slow, soft drag of the tentacle over his cock, wholly drugging in its own right. He doesn’t even notice at first when a questing tendril prods at his ass, simply pushing his hips back against the stimulation and only realizing what is happening when it starts to breach the ring of muscle. It slides in slowly, the same secretion it’s been feeding him easing the way as it pushes deeper. Shiro feels every centimeter of it sinking into him and even if he could do anything to protest it (but what can he, with another tentacle in his mouth and his muscles languid with drugged heaviness), he’s not sure he could muster up the focus to stop it. He’s close, so close to tipping over the edge of orgasm, and the tentacle slipping further upwards is heightening it, sharpening that point of pleasure with each wriggle against his prostate as it works.

It pushes deeper, not stopping and twisting like he’s been expecting. But why should it stop, he thinks, when the tentacles are longer than any other sort of appendage he’s ever imagined or worried about fitting inside of him? It does flex, the movement of it rocking Shiro’s body as he tries to decide whether to sink back against the intrusion or jerk up into the tentacle still twisted around his cock. The decision is made for him as another set of tentacles wind around his legs and link with the one at his waist, locking him into place and holding him steady as another two small tentacles push their way in alongside the one already filling him. 

They fit in slowly, and he thinks it an absurd kindness to let him adjust to the stretch, especially as the tentacles grow wider as they all slip in deeper, until he is seated, firmly, upon them. He can’t twist or grind down on them, and the light friction against his cock and slow twist of the tentacles inside him is far from enough. It’s maddening, keeping him just on that edge of release until he can feel every muscle in his body shaking for it, feels the sweat and tears slip down his face as he tries to find that bit of give that will let him move, let him find the friction to set him free. He clenches and releases the muscles that he can, working around the feeling of excessive fullness in his gut and driving himself up that peak.

Suddenly he’s empty and bereft as every tentacle except the ones holding him in place pull away, just as he’s about to fall over that crescendo. Shiro cries out, can’t stop his hips from jerking forward and back as far as he can in the restraint still around his waist, can’t stop looking around wildly for a reason why he’s been abandoned. He can see, vaguely through watery eyes he wishes he could wipe, the crowd on its feet, jostling and moving to make sure they’ve got a good vantage point still. He can hear the hum of camera drones around his body, no doubt getting close-up shots for those in the crowd with paid viewscreens. 

But all of that is secondary to the fact that he can see the tentacles hovering, just out of reach, paused like they are simply waiting to pull away further or dive back into him. 

Shiro wonders, briefly, which option would be worse.

There’s another announcement; Shiro can pick both his and Sendak’s names out of this one and he turns his head towards the place in the stands he can last remember seeing Sendak. Or he thinks he remembers, anyway.

Sendak _is_ there, only one section off, arms still crossed and still looking displeased, and Shiro again isn’t sure which option before him is the worse one here, but wildly, he thinks it’s the one that is currently deepening the frown on Sendak’s face. 

Which means he has to get the tentacles back, somehow.

“Please,” he rasps on the third try, his mouth and throat thick with slime, hard to clear and harder to talk around.

The announcer leans down, twitching one ear to better turn towards Shiro. “What was that, Champion? I don’t think we all heard you!”

“Please. I yield. Please don’t leave me like this.” He can feel his eyes water with need and exhaustion and he’s absurdly glad for it, the tear slipping down his dirty cheek giving his plea veracity.

The announcer turns towards Sendak, gesturing grandly. “Well, well, the Champion breaks! It seems only fitting that the slave’s master should have a say if his property is deserving! What say you, Commander?”

The entire arena seems to hold its breath as Sendak finally unwinds his arms, shoulders pushing back as his posture straightens. If his mouth weren’t already sticky and full of neopod secrete, Shiro’s sure it would be going dry at the figure Sendak cuts against the wild crowd. He watches with bated breath as Sendak holds his hand out in front of him in the style of the Romans, so, so long ago.

Finally, his hand turns to an upright thumb, a sign of approval.

Shiro has a moment to feel a wash of relief almost great enough to make him forget just what he’s relieved about. Then the tentacles are back on him, relentless, and he’s already so worked up. He doesn’t take his eyes off of Sendak as the tentacles force their way back down his throat and up his ass, stroking and claiming, but the fire in Shiro’s eyes belongs only to one entity in the crowd and he’s already turning away.

Shiro’s heart drops even as he plummets over the edge of release, his brain whiting out as he screams.

He comes to in the medbay again, sore everywhere and entirely unable to talk this time. He learns from the druid attending him that the tentacles had continued until they finished, a full five minutes after he had already come and passed out . Which explained the sore throat and sore everything, really.

He croaks his way through the examination and as he’s conscious and able to stand on his own two feet, he’s released to be someone else’s problem.

So he staggers back to his quarters. The doors must have been primed for his return, as they slide open even before he can touch the keypad to enter the code.

“I warned you not to lose.” Sendak won’t meet his eyes, but Shiro thinks that’s probably for the best. He’d feel ashamed too, if he could muster up the energy for it.

“You could have warned me a little bit more than that.” It’s another thing Shiro doesn’t have the energy for: the bite of sarcasm, so his words simply come out weary. And, oddly, disappointed.

“No, I couldn’t have,” Sendak says as he swirls the glass Shiro only just notices he’s holding. “No fighters new to the arena can be warned about other stages in advance.” 

“So there are others? Other stages?” Shiro asks as he watches Sendak take a sip of the glittering purple liquid, then throw it back and all but slam the empty glass down on the table.

“Ones you are unlikely to ever see after that performance. You’ll be lucky to live to your third bout unless you start learning.” Sendak crosses his arms again and Shiro must still have a vestige of the neopod’s aphrodisiac in him, because the action sends a pang of longing and lust through him. He wants to sink to his knees, let Sendak use him as he will and beg for more. He wants Sendak to ignore what he says and only do what feels right. He wants to let go, forget any hope of being free and give in. He’s fought hard and shown his worth so far; Sendak has tried to help him in his own way, he thinks. It might not be so bad, working his way up the ranks again.

But Shiro stops himself just in time. Sendak is no one to him but his trainer and keeper, and he is no one to Sendak but his slave, the unfortunate Champion placed in his care. Anything he thinks he sees or feels is nothing but a trick of the neopod; it’s nothing a good sleep can’t fix, if only Sendak will dismiss him so he can go to his bunk and rest. He’s tired and he hurts; there’s no promise giving in would stop that. It would only ensure harm to others, which he knows will ultimately hurt him more than any physical wound would. 

He stares down Sendak for a long moment, watching the yellow eyes widen briefly at the impertinence before narrowing. Shiro thinks he can almost see a grudging respect there, but he is tired and drugged and has never been good at reading Galran expressions under the best of circumstances. Their pupiless eyes give a sense of intense focus wherever they’re directed and Shiro can feel himself start to wilt under the weight of Sendak’s attention on top of his own exhaustion. 

So he drops his gaze and only says, “permission to be dismissed.” After a thought, he adds, “sir.”

For a second, Sendak’s eyes flicker before his expression sets again and not for the first time, Shiro wonders just why Sendak even takes care of him, patching him up and ordering salves from the druids. There’s likely some prestige attached to being the owner of the Champion, but Shiro has seen no evidence of it.

There’s nothing to read into Sendak’s tone either when he responds, “granted.” He tosses a jar at Shiro, who catches it with only minimal fumbling, a feat for which he feels inordinately proud. “You will apply that yourself, then, and report back here in the morning for a proper healing. We will begin again tomorrow with training as you seem to have forgotten everything you’ve been taught.”

The words lodge themselves in Shiro’s chest despite their blankness. He wants, against all better sense, to ask to stay, for Sendak to apply the salve, to feel the surety of Sendak’s broad, strong hands on his skin, the odd sense of safety he's learned to ascribe to these quarters. But down that road lies madness, which he has had quite enough of for today: if he closes his eyes, he can still feel the tentacles writhing within him, something he's quite sure he could have gone his entire life without being able to say.

When he opens his eyes, Sendak is looking at him, and the thought that the expression there might be worried or tender is what shakes Shiro out of his delusions. Of course it wouldn't. He needs to rest and sleep. Everything will be back to normal and make sense again after that.

So he simply bows his head to Sendak and excuses himself. As he reaches the door, he turns back briefly.

“Tomorrow, then.”

“Tomorrow.” It seems to take a century for the door to shut behind him and Shiro can feel Sendak’s gaze on him the entire time, a maddening temptation to turn and give in. Finally the door shuts, a solid barrier that he can collapse against without fear. Tomorrow he would deal with it. Tomorrow.


End file.
